Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled an updated Republican budget
plan yesterday that would slash $5.1 trillion in federal spending over the coming decade. It also
would make wide-ranging cuts in programs such as food stamps and government-paid health care for
the poor and working class.

Ryan’s plan also would cut Pell Grants for low-income students and pensions for federal workers.
The proposal would reprise a voucherlike Medicare program for future retirees that would be the
basis for GOP claims that the measure would drive down government debt over the long term.

It also relies on scorekeeping help from the Congressional Budget Office, reflecting the
beneficial effects of deficit cuts on long-term economic growth and tax revenues.

The plan should skate through the Budget Committee today but faces challenges on the floor next
week because it endorses a bipartisan pact — negotiated in December by Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate
Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash. — to increase agency operating budgets this year
and next.

Many conservatives who opposed the pact last year would have to reverse course and embrace it as
part of the GOP budget. Democrats who helped pass the Ryan-Murray pact in December will oppose the
GOP plan.

The legislation promises to serve more as a political and policy statement by House Republicans
than a realistic attempt to engage President Barack Obama and Democrats, who control the Senate, in
any serious effort to further cut the deficit.Senate Democrats already have announced they will not
advance a budget this year, but Ryan pitched his budget as a party-defining document addressing
where Republicans would take the nation if they return to power.

“It is not just enough for us to be an opposition party,” Ryan said. “We need to be a
proposition party. We need to be the alternative party. And we need to show the country the right
way forward to get this economy growing, to get our budget, our fiscal house in order.”

Ryan’s budget brings back a list of spending cuts, including $2.1 trillion over 10 years in
health-care subsidies and coverage under the Affordable Care Act, $732 billion in cuts to Medicaid
and other health-care programs, and almost $1 trillion in cuts to other benefit programs such as
food stamps, Pell Grants and farm subsidies.

While repealing the benefits of “Obamacare,” Ryan would preserve its tax increases and cuts to
providers, including cuts to private insurers under the Medicare Advantage program.

Steep cuts to Medicaid, which Ryan proposes to turn into a block-grant program managed by the
states, could drive millions of people from the program, including seniors in nursing homes and
children from low-income households.